Opinion: Happy May Day: Remember the folks who brought you the eight-hour work day [Opinion]
It started in 1866 as part of the movement pushing for the eight-hour workday. Back then, as historian Jacob Remes“The demand for an eight-hour day was about leisure, self-improvement and freedom, but it was also about power. When Eight Hour Leagues agitated for legislation requiring short hours, they were demanding what had never before happened: that the government regulate industry for the advantage of workers.
This campaign led to the passage of the first eight-hour workday law in Illinois that was set to take effect on May 1, 1867. Chicago workers celebrated its enactment with a huge parade and other festivities. Unfortunately, the next day, employers refused to recognize or implement the law, making their workers stay for the customary 10 or 11 hours. The workers responded with a massive general strike that was eventually crushed by the state militia.
By the 1880s, a revitalized labor movement took up the issue of the eight-hour workday once again. In 1886, workers in Chicago, led by anarchists, called for a general strike on May 1, and they vowed not to return to their jobs unless employers agreed to an eight-hour workday., “The demands of the militant Chicago anarchists coincided with a massive upswing in other militant movements. Workers and Texas farmers were rebelling against a monopolistic railroad system.
This was, of course, met with fierce resistance from police and the powers that be, and it led to the famous events at Haymarket Square. There, an unidentified man threw a bomb into a crowd of protesting workers, killing a police officer, which led the police to fire on the crowd.
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